


When the Feast is Over

by sexonastick



Series: Some Assembly Required [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Dark, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 13:17:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19928698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexonastick/pseuds/sexonastick
Summary: Beca Stark and Chloe Barton spent a few days together in a cave and then a whole lot of years together in bed after that.Beca talks about it that way sometimes, like it’s all a big joke, the way they had to hurt and heal each other. She wants to be able to think of it fondly, the way she thinks of all other parts of Chloe.She’d really like a chance to laugh, at least one last time before the world ends.





	When the Feast is Over

*

Like all the worst moments in Beca’s life, it happens suddenly.

She’s in the middle of a dream when it starts. 

It’s not a nightmare, at least.

Those happen less often than they used to, but so do dreams in general. Most of the time, it’s long drawn out nothing. Beca prefers it that way. Ever since she started sharing a bed with Chloe, most days she gets to sleep soundly. 

It’s been years of this but it’s still such a relief to rest through a whole night.

The nightmares are rare and when she does have them, Chloe is right there to wake her up. She’s gentle and reassuring, holding Beca as much or as little as she needs until the feeling passes. Or sometimes, less often, it’s the other way around. 

Sometimes it’s Chloe dreaming and Beca whispering softly in her ear, kissing between her shoulder blades, holding her tight until she wakes up. They work well together in most things, and this is only another example. 

It’s practice. Years of it.

This time there is another dream, but it’s pleasant. 

The kind you hate to wake up from.

The group of them are in Manhattan. It’s some kind of rooftop party. In celebration of what, she isn’t sure, but everyone’s there, even the ones who are living off the grid now. It’s like all of the problems, mistakes from the past, have been erased. That’s dream logic, for you. 

Stacie and her aunt have even promised to swing by later via covert helicopter. 

Which sounds like a massive contradiction, sure, but in the moment it makes perfect sense. Dreams work that way sometimes, because in dreams everything just works. The conflict doesn’t matter. The disappointments disappear. 

Beca is drinking a beer and sitting too close to the edge, one leg dangling out over nothing.

She’s got the suit ready on standby, nanotech built into her DNA by now — a safety net she can carry on her shoulders anywhere she goes. All the dangers, the vulnerability and fragility, don’t matter the way that it used to. She feels secure and happy.

Like she can withstand anything, even gravity, as long as she’s got Chloe at her side.

Or her back, more precisely. 

Chloe’s pressed up against her back, kissing her ear, whispering warm words that settle _heavy_ in Beca’s stomach with _want_ before she even registers their exact meaning. It’s something like, _let’s get out of here_ , and she’s about to ask Chloe to repeat it over the pulsing sound of the party — or maybe that’s her heartbeat getting faster, louder? 

But it’s not either of those things.

Because outside of her own head, back in the real world, an alarm on Beca’s phone is going off. 

“What?” her dream self asks.

The sound gets louder.

“What?” the real Beca asks, her mouth muffled against the pillow.

She’s aware of it (faintly), the noise pulling her up and out of slumber before Chloe is actually there, really pulling, shaking her. 

Gentle but still insistent.

Chloe’s touch on her back; Chloe’s voice close to her ear but not as near as she had been in the dream (disappointingly far away); Chloe’s pillow (empty); and the girl herself standing at the side of the bed, already half-dressed as she buttons up her shirt.

Beca sits up slowly and tries to rub the sleep from her eyes. 

Her head is still back on a rooftop in the city, listening to her dad and Steve talking over barbecue, but there’s an urgency in Chloe’s movements in the here and now that pulls Beca back toward reality. 

They work that way together. 

Even outside of all that time spent actually physically together (practice that makes habit), there’s a kind of magnetism in Chloe’s movements, always drawing Beca’s eyes back to her. 

She can find her in any room, day or night.

She’s staring now, watching the stretch of skin — highlighted in the moonlight — that disappears, inch by inch, as the buttons are finished and the shirt closes. Chloe moves closer, muscle flexing under fabric, and rubs Beca’s shoulder. She is firm but affectionate. “Come on, babe.” 

“I’m up,” Beca mumbles, not very convincing. She rubs her face again, palm working against her temple. “I’m so up.”

Outside their window, Venice is still dark. 

It isn’t helping.

Beca squints in the dim light, in search of her phone. 

Not finding it as fast as she likes, she groans and asks aloud, “Friday, what time is it?” 

“It is 1:17 am local time.” 

“Oh my god.” 

Chloe is still getting dressed, pulling on her shoes. She tosses Beca’s shirt at her head.

Which she catches, at least. 

It could have been seriously embarrassing otherwise.

“Why are they calling us in at one in the morning?” She pulls the shirt on over her head and flings her arms out wide in exasperation. “On our vacation!” 

“Probably because it’s an emergency.” Beca scowls, unconvinced, but Chloe gives her the most charming Barton smile. “And you’re the super genius they need to save the world.”

“What, dad wasn’t available?” 

Chloe shrugs and stands, pulling the sheets back in the same fluid motion. “Maybe it’s a local issue.” 

She offers her hand to Beca.

Which she takes with exaggerated reluctance. “Somebody owes me after this.” 

“You and me save the world first.” There’s that same wide grin, but with an undercurrent of wicked amusement just below the surface. “And then I’ll fuck your brains out after.” Chloe winks. “Sound good?”

“… I actually meant like. A big breakfast. Fancy Italian coffee.” Beca smirks, hoping she looks smooth, and moves to put her hands in her pockets before she realizes she’s still not wearing pants. Her hands just sort of land on her hips instead, resting there awkwardly. “But, yeah. Your offer is good too.”

“You left your jeans by the door.” 

“I knew that.” 

“Mmhm.”

“Seriously.” 

“It was like twenty hours ago, so I could understand how it might have slipped your mind.”

“Nineteen and a half!” Beca calls back over her shoulder as she goes to retrieve the jeans from the entryway — and visions of those nineteen (and a half) hours quickly flash back through her mind. 

(Chloe’s back arched, head thrown back, as Beca’s mouth explores each and every familiar scar, including the ones that she gave her; the warm taste of Chloe, how it lingers on her tongue; the way Chloe’s voice staccatos over Beca’s name when she cums; the curtain of her hair draped over Beca’s shoulder, her teeth rough at the back of Beca’s neck; the shower, the sink, the footstool that’s the perfect height for being bent over; the trip onto the balcony that broke a few decency laws before stumbling back inside; and all those hours with her head on Chloe’s chest, listening to her heart beating, while Chloe played with her hair and they talked about anything, everything, forever.)

Someone is going to owe them a lot.

And they probably should have taken a second shower somewhere in there.

*

They’re down at street level in under twenty, both dressed in black leather jackets. Chloe’s is sleek, form fitting, and Beca’s slouches like her shoulders. Agents will come by later to do a sweep of the rental house if they end up evacuating the city. Make sure to leave no trace that a Stark and a Barton were ever there.

But time is more important right now.

Beca checks the face of Chloe’s watch on the inside of her wrist and tries not to fidget. “When did Fury say he would check in?” She releases Chloe’s hand. She’s starting to feel annoyed, maybe even angry, and it shows in her voice; she’s sure of it. “I told him after Budapest that we weren’t doing anything else until we made it back to the states.”

“The message didn’t come from Nick.”

Beca blinks. That she wasn’t expecting. “Then who—”

“Surprised you even got her out of bed.” 

They both turn at once. 

The woman suddenly standing across the street smiles. Even though it’s the dead of night, Cynthia Rose is wearing sunglasses.

It’s pointless, but cool as hell. 

Beca doesn’t bother with any perimeter check — if there was any risk, CR would have handled it — as she charges across the road to offer her a handshake. It’s been too damn long. “If I’d known it was you, I probably would’ve gone at least seven percent faster.”

“You are such a nerd.” Chloe strolls up behind them. Her eyes are always on the move, scanning their surroundings, but she still allows herself a moment to give Beca a playful nudge. “Why am I attracted to such a nerd?”

Cynthia Rose removes her sunglasses, carefully folds them, and places them in her jacket pocket. She looks ready to get down to business, but Beca isn’t going to let that perfect opportunity pass her by. 

She pivots on her heel with a massive grin already on her face. “Because of my natural magnetism.” A beat passes. Neither of them laugh as much as they should — or at all really. “It’s— You know, because of the metal. I’m made of iron. Well, more like a gold titanium—”

“I hate to be the one to cut your vacation short,” Cynthia Rose interjects and Chloe actually looks relieved. (The traitor.) “But I have a message. From your father.”

Beca laughs. She just can’t help herself. “Clint’s really getting that sloppy?”

“No,” Cynthia Rose pushes on, her voice heavy. “ _Your_ father, Stark.” 

She pulls out a coms device and a projection of Tony’s face flickers to life. It’s a recording, New York City, late afternoon or maybe early evening. “Becs. Beca, honey, we need—” He’s cut off by the sound of an explosion. There’s a cut on his forehead and the sound of screaming somewhere down the street. Debris flies through the air. “—I really need you and Kim Possible to come back here. _Fast_.” Another explosion. He ducks, and the signal crackles. “Stay with your mom, and I’ll—” 

It cuts off with another loud bang.

In the recording it was still daylight. Six pm at the very latest, east coast time. That would have been two hours ago. At a minimum. 

Her heart is pounding so fast it feels like the shrapnel in her chest should be grazing it.

“… when was that taken?” 

In her mind, she sees visions of a cave. Hears an explosive triggering under her feet. 

It’s not like that was ever the only time that Beca’s heard a bomb up close. 

Of course not.

She’s heard so many since then, felt bullets screaming right past her. Most of the time, it’s nothing. Just another part of the job, another day they stole away from death. Other times, it takes her right back there. 

To the cave. 

Chloe’s hand is in hers, squeezing hard — firm and _here_ , now — but Beca can still feel an ache in her shoulder that pulses down to her wrist. An old familiar pain. 

“ _When_ was this recorded?” she asks again, her voice getting higher. More frantic. “Where is he?”

“We’re not sure.” 

Chloe’s grip on her hand tightens, but Beca can’t risk looking her way. One look at Chloe and all that _concern_ (however guarded) and she might actually fall apart. “You’re not… _sure_.”

“But the best we can tell, he’s not planet side.” Cynthia Rose looks quickly between the two of them. “To be honest, I can’t believe you didn’t hear about this shit already. Aliens attacked New York City. It’s all over the news.”

“We were in our room for most of the night.”

Chloe answers quickly, like that might be some relief. She’s handing Beca a lifeline, an excuse to try to stop that sinking feeling; but she feels it anyway. A whole day in bed together on vacation isn’t a crime. 

Except when you’re a superhero and it could mean the actual loss of other people’s lives. Especially if one of those lives is—

“Why didn’t anyone _tell_ us?” Beca knows she sounds accusing, angry.

It’s because she fucking is. 

She’s so mad that her voice is shaking.

“Pepper didn’t want us bringing you in. Agent Hill agreed.” Cynthia Rose looks almost remorseful, grimacing when she adds, “But I did not, obviously. Your mom wants to keep you safe and sidelined. But we need all hands on deck for this.” 

“Finding Tony?”

“This is a lot bigger than Iron Man.” 

A million smartass answers spring to mind, but all of them instantly feel like ash on her tongue. She can’t joke about this. Not now. 

Maybe never. 

If dad doesn’t come back, then never. 

“Big like how big?” Beca says, wanting to sound calm, cool, like a badass who gives zero shits. 

Could be it fools Cynthia Rose, but she’s sure that Chloe can see right through it — that she hears the way her voice cracks on the lift in _how_. 

She gives Beca’s hand another squeeze.

Not that it helps. 

It’s not enough to counteract the gut churning feeling when the answer comes: “Like world ending big.”

*

The flight back to New York isn’t pleasant.

It’s just under nine hours and that still doesn’t feel like enough time to cover all the ground they try to. Aliens of some kind, using magic. They leveled a few blocks of Manhattan. So what else is new there, right? Building prices should be dirt cheap in midtown at this rate.

Her brain keeps trying to be a smartass. To make this all okay again with jokes. 

But her heart still doesn’t buy it.

Chloe sits right at Beca’s side, so close their knees bump against each other in turbulence, and puts a hand on her wrist. She traces over the delicate collection of nerves and muscle, the small bones that have been broken so many times, and then links their hands together.

Beca realizes she’s distracted, watching the movements instead of the presentation on screen.

Something about the infinity stones and how they’re all doomed. 

Halfway to the city a message comes over coms. Most of the team, what’s left of it, is headed to Wakanda. Stacie stands near the front of the ship, one hand braced against the roof to maintain balance, and watches CR expectantly.

“Stark. It’s your call.”

Beca wasn’t expecting that. She sits up a little straighter. “Why me?” 

“You’re the best we’ve got on this plane.” 

Chloe gives her hand a squeeze, dropping her voice to a low murmur when she says, “We could still do a lot of good in New York, if you want. We don’t have to be at the frontline every time.”

That isn’t true. They both know it.

And that makes the only possible answer so much clearer. 

“Let’s redirect course.” Beca stands and lets go of Chloe’s hand. She can’t let herself rely on it, how much she wants to still be holding it. Not right now. “We’ve got a planet to save.”

But they’re still at least two hours out from their new destination.

It makes the whole dramatic grand gesture a little pointless. 

Beca sits back down again, and this time Chloe’s hand lands on her thigh.

*

This has always been a big part of the hero gig.

The waiting, the worrying, the expectant dread that’s like a rollercoaster. Somehow, even after years of flying, riding on a coaster still feels different. It’s the lack of control.

That’s what’s getting to her now. 

Beca’s thinking about caves again and the way explosions sound in different spaces. How much louder they can be when they hurt more. It’s irrational, completely without scientific grounding. 

But it’s true.

The things that are closer to you (emotionally) sound louder even at a distance.

Maybe Chloe is feeling something similar or maybe it’s just too obvious on Beca’s face, because they haven’t stopped touching each other since the change of course. Chloe’s hands are in her hair, tracing over the back of her neck.

Beca wants nothing more than to fly ahead, leave the plane and just feel _movement_. To set her own course, at least for a few hours. 

But that would mean leaving Chloe behind with all this, on her own.

She can’t do that. She won’t.

Because when the fighting starts and their focus narrows, they have to see the battlefield, the bodies, and nothing else. Not even each other. So for now, she’ll take what she can get. Even if all she has to offer is uneasy silence — her hands clenching over and over — and maybe that’s not a whole lot better than running away. 

It’s such a relief in the end when Wakanda finally comes into view.

*

Chloe had given her the choice — New York or the frontline — but it hadn’t really felt like an answer with real options. Maybe fighting the good fight wasn’t what they were born to do, but it’s who they became so long ago that it might as well be everything.

Beca doesn’t believe in destiny, but some things still feel inevitable. 

Like her with Chloe. 

It wasn’t fate, it was finding. The way that their pieces fit together happened all on its own, but rounding off their rough edges so that they can be better aligned came with effort. An engineer knows how to mold and modify, when it’s worth it. (Chloe is worth it.) It took time (practice), but it was always going to be this way.

It was always going to be Chloe.

Some answers never really had any other option.

*

It should be a happy reunion for everyone. It would be, if lives weren’t on the line.

Jesse is the first one to meet them when they land, alongside a delegation of Dora Milaje who are watching him very carefully. But he’s all smiles, oblivious to the threat. He knows he’s on his best behavior anyway, even if his idea of behaving involves barreling into Beca and pulling her into a hard hug. 

“Jesus,” she grunts.

“No, no, it’s Jesse.” He tsks and pulls away again, holding her at arm’s length and giving her a very exaggerated once over. “Has it been that long? Two weeks and you’ve forgotten my name.” He shakes his head. “Come on, say it with me now, Stark: Jess-E. Two syllables. Here we go.”

Chloe circles around behind him to give him a hard punch in the shoulder. 

The assembled warriors don’t even flinch, so apparently they’re here at the ready to protect something _other_ than the cocky American. 

“Hey, ow!” 

“Nice to see you too.” 

It’s been just two weeks since they left New York for a trip around Europe — their first vacation in four years — that was supposed to last another week longer, but Jesse is making a big show out of it like they haven’t spoken in years. He’s ever the showman, got that from Clint, who actually is someone Beca hasn’t seen in over two years. 

Not since that mess at the airport, back when dad stopped saying any of their names. 

But now he’s gone too, and it’s even messier. 

Jesse rubs his shoulder in exaggerated pain, but the look he’s trying to hide from his face is real enough — that hurt is genuine. “Hey, Chlo, there’s something you need to know first.” 

“The world is ending, yeah.” Chloe hefts the bag of equipment that Hill just handed off to her, slinging it over her shoulder. “We got the briefing on the plane.” 

“No, something else.” He lowers his voice but opens his stance, aiming this at Beca too. “Mom and dad are here.”

There’s just a micro-second of non-response from Chloe before the spy instincts kick in. Maybe it’s exhaustion from their nineteen hour marathon catching up with her, or it could be the stress of the whole world ending thing.

Either way, she doesn’t hide her lack of surprise fast enough. 

Because unlike Beca, Chloe _has_ been making contact with her parents in the occasional quick (and covert) rendezvous. It’s never enough, of course. She always comes back from the visits devastated, but trying to hide it. Smiling in a way that makes Beca feel uneasy and very, very small — unable to make this most important thing right again — but judging by the look on Jesse’s face, he didn’t know about the visits at all.

He couldn’t have, because there is confusion and a little bit (a lot) of hurt registering on his face. “… did you know they’d be here, Chlo?”

“I guessed on our way over.”

“You guessed.” 

Chloe shrugs. “Yeah, I made an assessment based on the evidence.” She’s avoiding looking him straight in the eye, and they all know it. “It’s our job, Jesse.” 

“Yeah, you know our job was to not see our parents for the last two years. That was part of our job too, Chloe.” He’s standing straight, pulling himself to attention, as if that somehow helps hold back the anger that’s so obviously building up inside him. “That was mission protocol, remember?” Two years. Two whole years of pretending not to care, not to miss (and need) his parents, all because of protocol and procedure. Jesse stands straighter, holds himself tighter (rigid), because it’s the only thing he still has to hold onto. “You know, I thought you’d be a little more surprised. Since you missed them too, right?”

She makes her face blank, a practiced emptiness, and looks back at him. “Not looking shocked when things are going to shit is another part of the job.”

“Uh-huh.” 

He looks over at Beca, who’s a whole lot worse at hiding her feelings. And they all know it. 

She practically gulps. “Well, I for one am very shocked.” 

She’s not and really doesn’t sound like it either. 

“… right.” Jesse licks his lips. He looks pissed, and he has every right to be. But they don’t have time for any of their feelings right now. “We’ll talk about this after.”

“After we save the world?” Chloe lifts her eyebrows pointedly. “Yeah, that sounds like the right priorities.”

Jesse’s laugh is entirely humorless and he doesn’t wait around for any more discussion.

He walks away without glancing back at them. Not once.

“… is the whole day going to be like this?”

Chloe grunts but doesn’t answer.

*

It’s been a while since Beca was last in Wakanda.

Just like every other visit, the tech has progressed beyond the limitations of her own imagination. She immediately regrets turning down Shuri’s last invitation to stop by; Beca would really love the chance to pick her brain over some of this. 

But the genius herself is occupied elsewhere.

“She’s trying to save Vision’s life,” Aubrey explains as she leads them through the layers of the laboratory. “It’s all very complicated. Maybe even too complicated for you, Beca, as shocking as I’m sure that is.” 

Chloe’s hand brushes over the small of Beca’s back and she shoots her a quick grin to reassure, but she doesn’t mind the jokes at her expense, not from Aubrey. They’re normal. Reassuring somehow. “I’m not so shocked, actually.” 

The entire room full of people turns to look at them as the door opens. They all stand perfectly still, just staring at each other. 

Clint is the first one to break.

He charges across the room at full speed, wrapping Beca and Chloe both up in a big hug.

Beca is startled, considers protesting, but she doesn’t have the energy to feign outrage. It’s so much easier to just sink into his arms, let him tousle her hair, and feel the vibrations of his voice when he says, “It’s going to be okay, kiddos.”

None of them can know that, but it’s nice — for now, for a moment — to have someone older say it. To feel almost like the kid she sometimes knows she still is (deep down, even all these years later) and have an adult, a parent, say that things are going to be okay.

Just one last time before the world ends.

*

The ground forces are here fast. Too fast.

It doesn’t matter, though. 

Nobody asks you if you’re ready for everything to change. It just happens.

Beca starts suiting up on the landing bay. Uncle Rhodey is there, looking more serious (and afraid) than she’s ever seen him before. He stops before the helmet slips on, watching her closely. “You ready for this?”

Her own helmet slides on fast, before he can see any uncertainty that’s probably there on her face. “Do I have a choice?”

“I guess not.”

“Then I guess I’m great.” 

She takes off, flying in a straight line for the perimeter forcefield. 

Chloe is with her parents, a part of the ground troops. Aubrey is there too, with Stacie and CR. From her vantage point up in the air, Beca can see the alien forces assembling; she really doesn’t think handguns or arrows are going to make a huge dent on this stuff. 

They’re going to have to hold the line as best they can.

Chloe’s always saying that Beca is more of an optimist at heart than she likes to let on, and maybe that’s true. Usually she can actually see the upside, somewhere buried underneath a layer of dirt; it’s just that she knows better than to trust it.

Just now, she’s not even sure that there is an upside. 

Maybe there’s just something less awful than death, which is feeling more and more inevitable by the second, and whatever the alternative is that’s the best that they can hope for now. This isn’t how being a hero works, you’re not supposed to assume the worst. It’s bad for focus.

But you’re not supposed to be captured either. 

Not supposed to have to suffer and almost die, over and over, with no fucking end in sight just to end up back here again anyway, facing death and hoping. 

In the middle of their fucking vacation. 

Someone’s going to owe them a whole hell of a lot, assuming they survive. 

It’s starting to feel like a pretty big assumption.

*

When they deliberately breach a part of their own defenses to let the enemy in, it’s pretty obvious that they’re getting desperate.

Beca’s power reserves are still close to their max, but there’s only so many bombs you can drop, especially now that there are friends mixed in alongside the enemy combatants. Even guided missiles can cause collateral damage when a payload is delivered into too big a crowd. Beca learned that at an early age, listening to the (many) lists of her father’s past mistakes. 

If she’s going to still be of use, she has to fly lower, zipping over the sea of bodies that twist and contort with violent movement. They look like ants, which is a pretty sociopathic thing to think probably, but they do. 

It doesn’t feel real. 

Even after so many years flying and saving lives, Beca has never seen anything quite like this.

It’s like when an airplane is landing and you see little farms and tiny cows that feel like part of a playset. The human brain can’t take in this much data and process it properly. It just becomes noise, something that reads as false.

So she flies a little lower, gets a better look at these bastards, before setting them alight with a laser. 

They scream, and it’s so fucking satisfying. 

The bombs are close, but they feel so far away now as she lands and begins trading more direct blows with aliens who practically shatter under her fists. It’s almost like an old friend, the way that bone sounds cracking under each heavy swing of her (gold titanium) hands, even through the growing ache that pulses from her hand up to her shoulder. That’s familiar too, in its own way.

It’s soothing. It’s simple.

It makes it all seem possible somehow. Just take one familiar step after the other, pummel one alien after the next, and they can win. But then slowly, faintly, there’s another sound too. It’s far away but pierces directly to the center of her; Beca hears it in an instant and stops right where she is, completely still. 

It sounds closer because it hurts more.

One of the alien assholes swings an axe and it collides — rebounds — against her right shoulder (reverberating with an old familiar pain) but Beca just ignores him. She turns in the direction of the sound. 

Beca recognizes it as something that she’s only heard a few times before.

She heard it on the day the bomb went off and changed her world. She heard it the day that men came and took Chloe from her. She heard it when Jesse was caught too close to an explosion and lost all hearing in his left ear. 

She hears it now, and her heart plummets. 

Natasha is screaming — not in anger, but in agony — calling Chloe’s name.

Beca takes off quickly and blasts the alien with the axe in the face as she boosts herself across the terrain, moving as fast as she can in the direction of the screams. She knows it’s not the right thing to do, not for the greater good, but she doesn’t care about that shit now because Chloe is on the ground, lying on her back in the dirt. There is blood in her mouth when she tries to laugh, to smile, to reassure. There’s blood in her mouth, spilling out onto her uniform. 

It’s leather, sleek and form fitting, and now it’s spattered in blood. Chloe’s blood.

Chloe’s struggling with unzipping the collar when Beca lands near her side and helps her finish. Chloe takes a deep (gasping) breath in. She laughs again. More blood. “Running from the fight so soon, babe?”

Beca’s helmet is off in an instant, peeling back from her face. She takes a deep breath in too, more to steady herself than from a real lack of oxygen. “Just checking on you.”

Chloe starts to choke and Natasha is there, stroking her hair back from her face. 

There’s a sudden stillness in the air. It overtakes everything. It’s a strangely piercing silence, heavy with impact. Like a blanket of nothing that slips over the world, suffocating everything, and stops the words right in your throat. 

Beca can hear her own heart beating and Chloe’s ragged breath, but almost nothing else.

Steve’s voice crackles over the coms. “We’ve got incoming.” 

“Roger that,” comes Aubrey’s clipped response, distorted by the static. 

“Go,” Chloe murmurs. “You need to—”

Natasha strokes Chloe’s hair one last time and stands, moving in a single fluid motion — all sharp edges and dangerous intent. “I’ll go. Beca—?”

It’s a question that goes unspoken. Both of them nod.

And then Natasha is gone, on her own.

Because Beca isn’t going to stand up from this spot in the dirt, not without Chloe. Not ever again. Maybe they all know that now. This is how things are going to end for them, whatever happens.

Maybe they were always headed exactly here.

“You need to leave,” Chloe tries again, her voice sounding smaller, further away, but maybe that’s just because it’s buried under Beca’s own heavy breathing, her pounding heartbeat rattling inside her skull. She almost feels lightheaded. “Beca, they _need_ you.”

“ _No._ ”

She takes Chloe’s hand in her own, grips it tight, and kisses over the back of her knuckles. Streaks of blood trail over her jaw, but she doesn’t fucking care.

“Beca—”

“Shut up and save your breath, jackass.”

Beca laughs, or at least she tries to. The sound dies quickly in her throat.

There is an ache, just there, so very close to her chest. Maybe that’s her heavy heartbeat starting to cause discomfort, strain, but it’s— it’s something else. 

“Beca?”

Chloe breathes the word more than asks it. 

Her voice is so far away now.

Her grip loosens in Beca’s. 

She can’t feel her at all anymore. She can’t—

She doesn’t feel anything. Not Chloe’s touch or the dirt underneath her. Not now.

Not—

“ _Beca_.”

She blinks slowly and her eyes try to focus on Chloe — the panic, the sheer terror on her face — but _everything_ is the feeling inside her. She can’t feel anything else but the tension, the twisting building _burning_ sensation of—

Nothing.

“… Chloe,” she breathes the word, warm breath on the wind, and fragments of her drift after it, first her lips, then jaw, then—

Everything. 

All of it to nothing.

* * *

Beca is there and then in an instant, as fast as Chloe’s rapid heartbeat, she isn’t.

There’s nothing but dust.

Chloe tries to catch it — to actually _catch_ her as she’s falling to pieces — and it just leaves a long smear of something that used to be Beca coating her hand, mixing with the blood already there. 

And then there’s nothing else. 

No body, no sign of what has happened, nothing to mourn or make sense of.

Through the pain — the agony — Chloe forces herself to sit up, blinking, staring around herself in shock and confusion. She is a logical person, she understands the forces they’re up against, but none of this makes sense to her and for a brief (desperate) moment she thinks this must be a dream. 

But all around her other people are collapsing into the same nothingness, parts of them scattering quickly on the wind, and Chloe knows with a razor sharp certainty in that moment that this is real.

Beca Stark is gone.

**Author's Note:**

>  **1.** Thanks to [sbrn10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbrn10) for so much encouragement and really dedicated beta work. 
> 
> **2.** I’ve had this idea bouncing around in the back of my brain since I saw Endgame and then Spider-Man pushed me over the edge.
> 
>  **3.** Happy Bechloe Week 2019. I'm so glad the timing turned out this perfectly, because I've been sitting on this chapter for almost two weeks now, dying to post it.
> 
>  **4.** I promise this one won't take five years to finish. Really, really promise.
> 
>  **5.** I have been really, really scared to post this because these girls are my babies and Unreal is something I’ve very, very proud of and I was half-terrified that even writing this would tarnish its legacy — as lame and hyperbolic as that probably sounds — but what’s the point of writing a thing if you aren’t willing to own and grow with it, I guess. The girls can't live forever in the past and neither can I.


End file.
